“I think so.” But instead of moving toward the stairs, Marvin lowered his voice. “Got to tell you, though, Lieutenant, when I tried to get a list of present and past S and G employees, I hit a stone wall. The CEO, Jonathan Ingmar, is a first-class obstructionist—”
“Let us handle that, Mr. Marvin.” D’Agosta fairly guided him by the shoulders to the staircase. They descended into the cooler air.
“It’s all going in my report,” said Marvin. “The technical details, the specs of the system, the works. I’ll have it for you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Mr. Marvin. You’ve done an excellent job.”
When they emerged onto the fifth floor, D’Agosta took a number of deep, grateful breaths.
8
MARTINI?”
In the apartment on Fifth Avenue, with its living room overlooking Central Park and the Onassis Reservoir, its surface gleaming in the late-afternoon sun, Bryce Harriman eased himself back on the Louis Quatorze sofa, maintaining a cool demeanor, reporter’s notebook resting on his knee. The notebook was, of course, for show only: everything was being recorded on his cell phone, tucked into the breast pocket of his suit.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Harriman was used to people breaking out the cocktails before noon—he had grown up with that sort of crowd—but in this case he was working and wanted to keep his wits about him. On the other hand, he could see that Izolda Ozmian, sitting opposite him on a chaise longue, really wanted a drink herself…and that would be something he should encourage.
“I’d love one,” Harriman said. “A double, straight up, with a twist. Hendricks, if you have it.”
He could already see her face brightening. “I’ll have the same.”
The tall, stooped, lugubrious butler who’d been waiting for their order responded with a grave nod and a “Yes, Mrs. Ozmian,” before rotating with a distinct creaking noise and disappearing into the recesses of the fantastically vulgar and overfurnished apartment.
Harriman felt a distinct advantage over this woman, and he was going to press it for all it was worth. She was a type he understood, someone pretending to be a member of the upper classes and making a hilarious mess of it. Everything about her, from her dyed hair, to her excessive makeup, to her very real diamond jewelry—in which the diamonds were too large to be elegant—made him want to shake his head. These people never would get it. They never would understand that vulgar diamonds, stretch limos, Botoxed faces, English butlers, and giant houses in the Hamptons were the social equivalent of wearing a sandwich board on which was written:
I AM A NOUVEAU RICHE
TRYING TO APE MY BETTERS
AND I DON’T
HAVE A CLUE
Bryce himself was not nouveau riche. He didn’t need diamonds, cars, houses, and butlers to announce that fact. All he needed was his last name: Harriman. Those who knew, knew; and those who didn’t weren’t worth bothering about.
He had started his journalism career at the New York Times, where he worked his way up through sheer talent from the copy desk to the city desk; but a small contretemps involving his reporting of an incident that came to be known as the subway massacre, along with being outreported and outmaneuvered on the story by the late, great, and insufferable William Smithback, had led to his unceremonious dismissal from the Times. That had been the most painful period in his life. Tail between his legs, he had slunk over to the New York Post. In the end, the move proved to be the best thing to happen to him. The ever-vigilant, ever-restraining editorial hand that had muzzled him at the Times was far more relaxed at the Post. No longer was someone always looking over his shoulder, cramping his style. There was a sort of a slumming chicness attached to the Post’s brand of journalism that, he found, had not hurt him with his people. During his ten years at the paper, he’d risen through the ranks to being a star reporter at the city desk.
But ten years was a long time in the newspaper business, and his career had been sputtering of late. For all his feelings of condescension as he looked at this woman, he was still aware of a certain frisson of desperation. He hadn’t broken a big story in a long time, and he was starting to feel the hot breath of his younger colleagues on his neck. He needed something big—and he needed it now. And this, he felt, might just be it. He had the knack of sniffing out a certain kind of story, talking his way into seeing a certain kind of people. And that included the woman sitting across from him: Izolda Ozmian, former “fashion” model, social clawer-upper, gold digger par excellence, ex-trophy-wife to the great Anton Ozmian, who in her nine months of connubial bliss had earned herself ninety million dollars in a famous divorce trial. That, Bryce noted privately, came out to $10 million a month, or $333,000 a fuck, assuming they made the beast with two backs once daily, which was a generous estimate, considering Ozmian was one of those dot-com workaholics who practically slept in the office.
Bryce knew his instincts for a story were sharp, and this had all the makings of a good one. But these days he had to worry about his compatriots at the Post, those hungry young Turks who would like nothing more than to see him dethroned. He’d had no luck getting in to see Ozmian—which he’d expected—and the cops were being unusually tight-lipped. But he’d had no trouble getting in to see Izolda. Ozmian’s second wife was famously bitter and vindictive, and he had a strong sense that here was the mother lode, all tied up in a vicious and beautiful package, waiting to unload a bargeful of trash.
“Well, Mr. Harriman,” said Izolda, with a coquettish smile, “how can I help you?”
Harriman started off slow and easy. “I’m looking for a little background on Mr. Ozmian and his daughter. You know, just to help paint a picture of them as human beings—after the tragic murder, I mean.”
“Human beings?” Izolda repeated, an edge to her voice.
Oh, this is going to be good.
“Yes.”
A pause. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly characterize them that way.”
“I’m sorry?” Bryce asked, feigning dumb ignorance. “What way?”
“As human beings.”
Bryce pretended to take a note, giving her time to go on.
“I was such a naive little girl, an innocent model from Ukraine, when I met Ozmian.” Her voice had taken on a whiny, self-pitying note. “He swept me off my feet, boy did he ever, with dinners, private jets, five-star hotels, the works.” She gave a snort. Her accent had a pleasing susurrus of Slavic overlain with an ugly Queens drawl.
Harriman knew she hadn’t just been a fashion model: her graphically nude pictures were still circulating on the web and probably would be until the end of time.
“Oh what a fool I was!” she said, her voice trembling.
At that moment the butler arrived carrying two immense martinis on a silver tray, placing one in front of her and one by Harriman. She seized hers like someone dying of thirst and sucked down half a swimming pool’s worth before placing the glass daintily down.
Bryce feigned a sip. He wondered what Ozmian had seen in her. She was, of course, drop-dead gorgeous, thin, athletic, stacked, her body now curled up on the chaise longue like a cat, but there were a lot of beautiful women in the world he could have picked. Why her? Of course, there might have been reasons that only became apparent in the bedroom. As she talked, his mind drifted over various possibilities in that arena.
“I was taken advantage of,” she was saying. “I had no idea what I was getting into. He took a sweet foreign girl and crushed her, like that.” She picked up a frilly pillow, twisted it in the most alarming way, then tossed it aside. “Just like that!”
“What was the marriage like, exactly?”
“I’m sure you read all about it in the papers.”
Indeed he had, and in fact had written quite a bit about it himself. As she well knew. The Post had taken her side—everybody hated Anton Ozmian. The man went out of his way to be detested.
“It’s always good to hear it directly from the source.”
“He ha
d a temper. Oh my gawd, what a temper! A week into our marriage—a week—he trashed our living room, broke my Swarovski Kris Bear collection, every single one, crunch crunch crunch, just like that. It broke my heart. He was horribly abusive.”
Bryce remembered the story. That was when Ozmian had discovered she’d been sleeping with her CrossFit trainer as well as an old boyfriend from Ukraine all along, and there was even a suggestion she had done both of them the morning of the wedding. So far, nothing new. She’d tried to claim he beat her up, but that was disproved in court. In the end she sued for divorce and pried ninety million out of his pocket, which was no mean feat, even if he was a decabillionaire.
Bryce leaned forward, his voice full of sympathy. “How terrible that must have been for you.”
“Right from the start I should have guessed, when my little Poufie bit him the first time she met him. And then—”
“I wonder,” he continued gently, steering the conversation, “if you could tell me something about his relationship with his daughter, Grace.”
“Well, you know she was from the first wife. She wasn’t mine, that’s for sure. Grace—what a name!” She gave a poisonous laugh. “She and Ozmian had a close relationship. They were both cut from the same cloth.”
“How close?”
“He spoiled her rotten! She partied all the way through college, only graduating when her father gave a new library to the school. Then she did a two-year Grand Tour of the Continent, sleeping her way from one Eurotrash bedroom to the next. Spent a year clubbing in Ibiza. Then she was back in America, burning through Daddy’s money, supporting half of Colombia’s gross national product, I’m sure.”
This was new. During the divorce, the daughter had been more or less off limits to the press. Even the Post wouldn’t drag a kid into a divorce like that. But she was dead now, and Harriman could feel his reportorial radar starting to ping big time.
“Are you saying she had drug issues?”
“Issues? She was an addict!”
“Just a user, or a genuine addict?”
“Two times in rehab, that celebrity place in Rancho Santa Fe, what was it called? ‘The Road Less Traveled.’” She gave another derisive snort of laughter.
The martini was gone and the butler brought her another unasked, whisking away the empty glass.
“And what drug was at issue here? Cocaine?”
“Everything! And Ozmian just let her do it! Enabler of the worst kind. Terrible father.”
Now Harriman came to the crux of the matter. “Do you know, Ms. Ozmian, of anything in Grace’s past that might have led to her murder?”
“A girl like that always comes to a bad end. I worked my butt off in Ukraine, I got myself to New York, no drugs, no alcohol, ate healthy salads without dressing, worked out two hours a day, slept ten hours a night—”
“Was there anything she might have done, such as buying or selling drugs, getting involved with organized crime, or anything else that might have led to her murder?”
“Well, as far as drug dealing, I don’t know. But there was something in her past. Awful.” She hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t say—Ozmian made me sign a nondisclosure agreement as part of the divorce settlement…”
Her voice trailed off.
Harriman felt like a prospector whose pick had just glanced off a vein of pure gold. All he had to do was poke around and brush away some dirt. But he played it cool; he had learned that instead of following up with a probing question, the best way to let something like this come out was silence. People felt compelled to talk into a silence. He pretended to look over his notes, waiting for the second double martini to do its work.
“I might as well tell you. Might as well. Now that she’s gone, I’m sure the NDA is no longer valid, don’t you think?”
More silence. Bryce knew enough not to answer a question like that.
“Right at the end of our marriage…” She took a deep breath. “Drunk and high, Grace ran over an eight-year-old boy. Put him in a coma. He died two weeks later. Just awful. His parents had to remove him from life support.”
“Oh no,” said Harriman, genuinely horrified.
“Oh yes.”
“And what happened then?”
“Daddy got her off.”
“How?”
“Slick lawyer. Money.”
“And where did this occur?”
“Beverly Hills. Where else? Had all the records sealed.” She paused, finishing her second drink and plunking it down in triumph. “Not that sealing records matters anymore—not for her. Looks like that girl’s luck finally ran out.”
9
HOWARD LONGSTREET’S OFFICE in the big FBI building on Federal Plaza was exactly as Pendergast remembered it: sparely decorated, lined with books on every imaginable subject—and computerless. A clock on one wall told anyone who was interested that the time was ten minutes to five. With the two dusty wing chairs and small tea table arranged on a hand-knotted Kashan rug in the middle of the room, the space looked more like the parlor of some ancient English gentlemen’s club than a law enforcement office.
Longstreet was sitting in one of the wing chairs, the omnipresent Arnold Palmer on a coaster on the table. Shifting his large frame, he ran a hand through his long gray hair, then used the same hand to silently gesture Pendergast to the other seat.
Pendergast sat down. Longstreet took a sip of his drink and replaced the glass on its coaster. He pointedly did not offer one to Pendergast.
The silence stretched on and on before the FBI’s executive associate director for intelligence spoke. “Agent Pendergast,” he said in a clipped tone, “I’ll have your report now. I want to know your opinion, in particular, if the two murders were done by the same person.”
“I’m afraid I have nothing to add to the case report you already have on the first homicide.”
“And the second?”
“I haven’t involved myself with it.”
A look of surprise crossed Longstreet’s face. “You haven’t involved yourself? Why the hell not?”
“I didn’t receive an order to investigate it. It doesn’t appear to be a federal case, sir, unless the two killings are linked.”
“Son of a bitch,” Longstreet muttered, frowning at Pendergast. “But you’re aware of the second murder.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t think they’re linked?”
“I prefer not to speculate.”
“Speculate, damn it! Are we dealing with one killer—or two?”
Pendergast crossed one leg over another. “I will review the options. One, the same killer did both; a third would define him as a serial killer. Two, the killer of the first victim dumped the body, and the head was removed by an unrelated party who then went on to try his own hand at a murder-decapitation. Three, the second murder was a simple copycat effort imitating the first. Fourth, the killings are entirely unrelated, the two decapitations coincidental. Fifth—”
“That’s enough!” Longstreet said, raising his voice.
“My apologies, sir.”
Longstreet took a sip of his drink, put it down, and sighed. “Look, Pendergast—Aloysius—I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t assign you that first murder as a form of punishment for your rogue performance on the Halcyon Key case last month. But I’m willing to bury the hatchet. Because, frankly, I need your peculiar talents on this case. It’s already blowing up, as you surely know from the papers.”
Pendergast did not reply.
“It’s vital we find out the connection between these two homicides—if there is one—or conversely prove there’s no link. If we’re dealing with a serial killer, this could be the start of something really terrible. And serial killers are your specialty. The problem is, despite the noise we made about the first body being brought in from Jersey and dumped in Queens, there’s really no proof it was an interstate crime—making our investigation delicate in terms of protocol. I can’t officially involve anybody else from our
office—not until the NYPD asks for help, and you know that won’t happen unless terrorism is involved. So I need you to get in there and take a close, hard look at the second homicide. If this is the work of a nascent serial killer, I want to know. If it’s two separate killers, then we can back off and let the NYPD handle it.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Will you please quit with the ‘sir’ business?”
“Very well.”
“I know Captain Singleton, he’s a stand-up guy, but he’s not going to tolerate our involvement for long without a clear federal mandate. I also know you have a long history with the commanding lieutenant…what’s his name? D’Agosta.”
Pendergast nodded.
Longstreet gave him a long, appraising gaze. “Get to the scene of that second murder. Figure out if it’s the same guy or not—and report back to me.”
“Very well.” Pendergast prepared to rise.
Longstreet lifted a hand to stop him. “I can see you’re not your usual self. Aloysius, I need you operating at 100 percent of your game. If there’s anything that won’t allow you to do that, I have to know. Because something about these homicides feels…I don’t know… strange to me.”
“In what way?”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but my radar is rarely wrong.”
“Understood. You can be assured of my best.”
Longstreet sat back, using the raised hand to make a dismissive gesture. Pendergast stood, nodded dispassionately, then turned and left the office.
10
AN HOUR LATER, Pendergast was back in his set of three adjoining apartments in the Dakota, overlooking Central Park West and West Seventy-Second Street. For several minutes he moved restlessly through the many rooms, picking up an objet d’art and then putting it down, pouring himself a glass of sherry but leaving it forgotten on a sideboard. It was curious, these days, how he found so little pleasure in the diversions that had once offered him interest and reward. The meeting with Longstreet had put him out of sorts—although it was not the meeting, exactly, so much as the probing and irritating comments with which it had ended.
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